Monday, June 23, 2008

Brandon started off the season extremely well but has since not had results that would please most fantasy owners. Let's look. Again, I only examined the home starts to make sure we get as valid a comparison as possible.

To start off with, his release point his release point appears to be becoming more and more horizontal as the starts progress.You can see it fairly well in the first one but the second chart you can really see how it progresses more horizontally as each start progresses (the 3rd chart is the 6-17 start). Could this be because of fatigue? What about each pitch type?It appears that even though the curveball does trend more towards the left, the majority of it is his fastball. Considering the majority of his pitches are fastball, it stands true that if your main pitch differs from normal you will have different results. Looking at the average end speed for each of the pitches what I notice is not the average end speed, it's the decreased difference between his fastball and his off-speed pitches. Less of a difference in end speed means you have to have improved control.

It looks like he does have less control (especially off the inside corner) as the year goes on. He has good control on the outside part of the plate, but on the inside, he's really starting to struggle.Zooming in a little bit, the picture is a little more clear.With the zoom in, it is easier to see how his earlier starts he was able to locate his pitches better on both the inside and outside corners.His movement in the last several starts explain a lot. Looking at the 2nd chart, his changeup's movement has been the same as the fastball. The speed difference wasn't as great as it was earlier so, the fastball basically started to move like a batting practice fastball. Overall, in the chart on the right you notice that there are really only 2 areas where the clusters tend to form. His curveball and the other group which includes his slider, sinker/fastball, changeup.

Looking at how many pitches he threw in each start and the total number of pitches in his home starts:

date

Total

04-11

04-22

05-03

05-08

05-15

05-31

06-17

pitch

??

12

0

0

0

11

0

0

23

CH

7

15

11

11

10

6

6

66

CU

27

16

16

13

16

25

13

126

FA

55

62

75

79

69

77

60

477

FC

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

IN

0

0

0

0

0

0

4

4

PO

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

1

SL

3

2

1

1

5

0

0

12

Total

104

96

103

104

111

108

84

710

There are no astronomically high pitch numbers nor are there any reliance on anything other than his primary pitch.

To me it looks like something has changed ever so slightly in his delivery. I'm not ready to call it fatigue or an injury but something is different. The good news is that right now it looks like it is something that could be fixed but there's no definite timeline or else they would have already fixed it. It is something that we'll have to keep an eye on however.